SIMON WAS SITTING BY Stella, watching her, willing her to awaken, when he saw her hand twitch. He jumped up. “Nurse!” he shouted, and Debra at the desk ran in. He pointed to Stella. “She moved her hand! I swear she moved her hand!” he cried.
“I’ll get the doctor,” Debra said, and five minutes later there was a doctor he didn’t know, bending over Stella, studying her, and then rising. “It’s just a neurological response,” the doctor told him. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Simon looked at him askance. “How can you say that? She moved. She moved her hand!”
The doctor shook his head. “Neurological response,” he said.
“What if it’s not? What if you’re wrong?”
The doctor arched one brow. “I could be wrong,” he said. “But you should remember that you don’t just wake up like that from a coma. It happens very gradually. This isn’t the movies,” he said. Then he gently touched Simon’s shoulder.
Simon left the hospital after that. He drove aimlessly, waiting for rides. April tomorrow, and the weather would be turning warmer. He knew people were going to start walking more in the city, taking fewer Lyfts, and he’d have to adjust to that. April first, he thought. The joke was on him.
He drove up to Ninety-Sixth Street and then back down and toward the hospital, when he saw Libby standing on the curb, arguing with the motorcycle boyfriend, the guy whose name he had forgotten. She was shouting, but so was the guy, who kept grabbing for Libby’s pockets, her purse, pushing her so hard she fell to the sidewalk. Simon beeped his horn furiously, hoping to scare the guy, who turned and gave Simon the finger, then ran around the corner. Libby slowly picked herself up.
He pulled the car over to the curb. Libby’s face was drawn and she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. She shoved a pad into her pocket, and he could see despair written on her face. He rolled down the window by the passenger’s side. “Libby,” he called. “Come on. Get in,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. He expected her to tell him no, but she pulled open the door and slid in next to him. “Could you just drive?” she said quietly. “I don’t think I want to go home right now.”
“Sure,” he said. He didn’t want to go home either.
He wove through the city streets, no destination in mind. He waited for her to say something about what had happened, but when she didn’t, he said, “Was that guy your boyfriend?”
“What?” she said, startled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business. I saw the two of you fighting. I’m just concerned. Ignore me.”
“He’s not my boyfriend anymore,” she said. “He’s a jerk. I don’t even know why he came to the hospital. We broke up.” She swallowed hard.
“Okay,” he said, and then he turned the wheel onto another street and she began to talk.
“I know what you’re probably thinking. I know what you saw. Or what you thought you saw,” Libby said.
“No judgment,” Simon said.
“He made me laugh,” she said. “He was kind and funny, a teacher. That’s why I was with him.” Her voice was breaking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You have problems of your own. You don’t need to listen to me carry on. This is all my fault, anyway.”
“Yes, I do need to listen,” he said. “I’m glad to be hearing someone else’s woes.”
She swiped at her face. “Please,” he said. “You’d be doing me a favor, taking my mind off myself, letting me be useful to another person.”
She dug out a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes. “I was so furious that a drug put Stella into coma, and haha, the joke’s on me, because I didn’t even see that a guy I let get close to me has a drug problem himself,” she said. “Isn’t that great? A doctor falling in love with a drug user and not even knowing it. Or maybe I did know it, but I chose to ignore it, the way his pupils changed, the way he sometimes acted a little off. I never saw him actually using, and when I asked him, he acted so offended. He hid it so well, or maybe I just didn’t want to see it. I so wanted it to work that I made myself blind.”
Simon thought of the way he sat by Stella’s bed, desperate for everything to be different, to go back to normal. Love always lied to you. It made you believe the impossible.
Libby rubbed her eyes. “He was writing prescriptions for himself. Oxy. Percodan. The whole works.” She sat up taller in her seat. “He was using my pad. I could have lost my license. I could have gone to jail. He could have died . . .”
“Please don’t see him again,” Simon said.
“Yeah. Don’t worry. I won’t. I’m going to change the locks.”
“That’s smart.”
“But the thing of it is, I can’t help feeling scared, wondering if he’s okay. And then I tell myself that’s not my business anymore. And he never got violent with me before. Never.”
“I’ll walk you to your door,” Simon said. “Make sure it’s all okay.”
“Don’t tell anybody about this,” she said. “I can’t tell anyone either. Not unless I report him.”
“Why not?” Simon said. “I’ll bet this has happened before with other doctors. And this clearly wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” she whispered. “I’m a doctor. Don’t you know we’re gods?”
“You’re also human.”
She sat up straighter. “I don’t feel very much like I am.”
“Want me to tell you about me?” Simon said. “You’ll feel better and you can even hold it over me if you want. Maybe it will be different from what Stella told you.”
For the first time she smiled. “Go on,” she said. “Surprise me.”
So he told her about how he’d begun as a musician, how he sent himself to Manhattan School of Music because his parents wouldn’t pay for something they didn’t consider a real profession. He told her about California, the band going on without him, and how sad that made him. Then he told her how terrified he was about Stella, how he didn’t know what to do, and every day the terror grew.
“You’re doing it. You talk to her. You visit. You play her music. I see you taking care of her mom, too. That’s nice.”
“I do what I can.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m not any good anymore. Not at music.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “I feel it. And it’s hard when you don’t have anything lined up.”
“You should still play,” she insisted. “You haven’t at all?”
“I’ve been fooling around a little, I guess,” he admitted. “Even made a demo. I thought I’d send it around, until I realized I was being stupid, juvenile. And no one even does that anymore, really. They put their stuff up on the web, on YouTube or Spotify, but if I did that, I’d be one among zillions. How would anyone even know how to find me, to look? And what if I got no hits? I’d feel like a fool. I’d be lucky to earn a dollar. I’d be the over-the-hill idiot who wants to be one of the kids, which I don’t. I really don’t. I just want to play music.”
“Let me hear the demo,” she said.
“Come on, you’re being nice. You don’t want to hear it.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I don’t have it here.”
“Yes, you do,” she said.
“Fine. I do.”
He fumbled for a minute with his phone. There were only five songs, and he had no idea if they were any good. Sometimes he thought yes, but mostly no. As it played, she sat quietly, so he didn’t know what she was thinking, but at least she seemed to be listening. When it was over, she turned to face him and he waited. He knew his music wasn’t for everyone, that different people liked different things, just as with books and films.
“Well . . .” he said, embarrassed.
“That was amazing,” she said. “The words. The music. I could have listened forever.”
“You’re kidding,” he said. “You don’t have to be kind to me.”
“Can’t you still send this to the California manager?” she asked.
“No. He signed the rest of the band, but not me. And I was replaced.”
“There must be someone else. What about that guy, whatever his name is—Rob?”
“Rick,” Simon said. “Rick Mason. And it wouldn’t even get to him. He’s too fucking famous. I don’t know anyone else. Not anymore. And my being replaced isn’t exactly a secret in the music world. It doesn’t help my chances.”
They were silent for a moment, and then she looked at him, excitement flashing in her eyes. “Oh my God. You know what?” she said. “I know someone. I do. He was my patient for three weeks, and we became friends. When he left, he brought me flowers and gave me his card. He’s a CEO on one of the labels.”
“He was flirting with you. They don’t give anyone anything for nothing.”
“No, no, he wasn’t. He had a wife he loved who was there all the time. I loved her, too. He told me to contact him, but I never had a reason to because I don’t know any musicians. But now I do. I could pass your demo on to him.”
“Come on. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s crazy. He probably won’t even remember you. Why would he think that his doctor knew talent? And why would he do anything for you or for me?”
“So what?” she said. “So you hear a no or you hear nothing. But at least you try, at least you never give up.”
“What label?”
“A new one, I think. Cancun Records.”
Simon started. He knew that label. He’d heard that they took chances. “What’s this guy’s name?”
“Michael. Michael Foley.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s such an easy thing for me to do, and if it makes things better for you, it’ll be better for Stella. And if it’s better for Stella, it’s better for me. As a doctor and as her friend.” She took out a pen and paper from her purse, scribbling something down and handing it to him. “Send me the file. At least it will put both of us in good moods, right? We could both use some hope.”
Simon stared straight ahead, trying to think. It was night now, and he glanced at the sky, knowing that there were stars up there. He could wish on every one of them, but nothing would happen. “Okay,” he said finally. “You can do it. But I’m not expecting anything.”
She looked at him. “Yes, you are,” she said quietly. “You know you are.”